Chapter 5. Working with Still Images

I absolutely adore capturing still images from my digital videotapes, especially when shooting videos of the young 'uns. Why? Because although my Kodak DC4800 takes much higher-quality, 3.2-megapixel images, it can shoot only about once every six seconds. When you've got DV tape rolling, this gives you about 180 chances to get the shot you really want, compared to one shot with the Kodak.

On the other hand, some days I just don't want to mess with my camcorder, and I grab the Kodak instead. With my 1-GB flash memory card, I can take pictures all day long and usually find many nuggets worth keeping. Of course, these are huge images that often need to be cropped, cut, or reduced in resolution to work optimally in Studio.

This chapter covers three topics: grabbing images from your camcorder or movie files, prepping images for use in a video production, and adding motion to your still images. These motion-related features are typically called pan-and-zoom effects, or Ken Burns effects, after the director who popularized their use in documentaries like The Civil War and Baseball.

Ultimately, you'll build your slideshow on the Timeline, as described in Working with Still Images, in Chapter 7. This chapter will provide the building blocks so you can hit the ground running when you're ready to work in the Timeline.